NCJ Number
188203
Date Published
1998
Length
836 pages
Annotation
This volume presents and discusses approximately 1,800 criminal cases to aid understanding of criminal law in the context of specific crimes or defenses to criminal charges; the volume also considers constitutional limitations on punishment and on the conduct that can be declared criminal.
Abstract
The preface notes that although general concepts and specifics of particular crimes interact and influence each other, the direction of thinking in the development of criminal law has usually been from specific offenses to generalizations, both historically and analytically. The first section presents and comments on cases intended to display the structure and conceptual apparatus of criminal law with respect to homicide. The cases and discussion focus on definition, proof, sorting, justification and excuse, unintentional injury, causation, punishment, and the limits of criminal law. The second section explores the criminal law as a social process by observing the growth, maturation, and consolidation of the law relating to three forms of theft: larceny, embezzlement, and false pretenses. It next raises longstanding policy questions that relate to the ownership and acquisition of property. The third section uses the crime of rape to present the relationship between law and its social context. The fourth section reexamines concepts considered earlier from the perspective of the tension in criminal law between attention to the actor and attention to the act. The final section focuses on constitutional limitations on aspects of criminal law considered earlier in the volume without reference to the Constitution. It also presents two presentence reports as a basis for discussing issues related to punishment and to individual liberty. Footnotes, index, list of cases cited, and approximately 500 references